New Troubles For Kirkpatrick

By Russ Hoyle

A blunt speech stirs controversy

President Reagan had just completed his carefully prepared speech assuring the British Parliament of steadfast U.S. support in the Falklands crisis. Then, as his advisers in both Washington and London scrambled to formulate a response to the sudden Israeli invasion of Lebanon, distressing news arrived from another quarter. Speaking before a conference of the conservative Heritage Foundation in New York City, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick had just delivered a scathing indictment of the U.S.'s conduct of foreign affairs. The former Georgetown University government professor assailed U.S. policymakers for their "persistent ineptitude in international relations that has persisted through several decades, several Administrations." The U.S., she charged, was guilty of "stumbling from issue to issue almost on a Mad Hatter basis." Added Kirkpatrick: "We simply have behaved like a bunch of amateurs, in my opinion."

The tirade was the latest shock in what some White House aides bluntly refer to in private as "the Kirkpatrick problem." Worse, the speech came only days after she and Secretary of State Alexander Haig deeply embarrassed the Administration by missing signals on how the U.S. should vote on a Security Council resolution concerning a Falklands ceasefire. The two events served to highlight the apparent inability of Reagan's foreign policy team to speak with a single, coherent voice. But they also renewed speculation that Kirkpatrick, who has had a long-running feud with Haig, might be removed from her U.N. post.

The White House attempted to play down the Kirkpatrick speech. But aides traveling with the President confessed to astonishment at her behavior. Said one incredulous adviser: "Can you believe she made that speech while we're over here? What's the matter with her?" Asked by reporters whether he agreed that U.S. foreign policy was inept, Haig shrugged good-naturedly: "No more so than 200 some years of American history. At times it is. At times it's not." For her part, Kirkpatrick claimed correctly but somewhat irrelevantly that she had "said nothing I have not said at least ten times in the last three months" in defending her premise that the U.S. should learn to work more skillfully in the U.N.

Kirkpatrick's difficulties stem, at least in part, from the nature of her job. Says one knowledgeable diplomatic source: "She has been shocked into seeing that her role is a marginal one. You can't change the framework of existing foreign policy in New York." Indeed, ever since the U.N. ambassadorship became a Cabinet-level post in 1961, the position has had a complicated dual status. As a Cabinet member, Kirkpatrick is entitled to press her views on the President. At the same time, however, she must report to and take orders from the Secretary of State. Apparently unwilling to be a mere "company commander," as Haig unflatteringly but more or less correctly described her role, Kirkpatrick sometimes takes an independent line on important foreign policy issues, to the dismay of the Secretary and others at the State Department. On the Falklands dispute, she has been conspicuously out of step, favoring neutrality in order to preserve U.S.-Latin America ties, while the Administration sided with Britain.

At the U.N., Kirkpatrick's brusque manner has ruffled friend and foe alike, and occasionally dulls her effectiveness as a diplomat. Last year, for example, when 93 "nonaligned" countries signed a document criticizing the U.S. for, among other things, "aggression," after a pair of U.S. Navy jets shot down two Libyan fighters over the Gulf of Sidra, Kirkpatrick lashed out with a letter accusing them of what she called "absurd and erroneous charges" and "fabrications and vile at tacks." The upshot was that countries planning to criticize the document decided to keep silent, for fear of appearing to side with the U.S. Says a former U.S. official: "She practices diplomacy by insult."

Despite her tough-minded, critical approach to her job, Kirkpatrick has made few practical changes that might give the U.S. more clout. She is often behind schedule, and her staff once kept Soviet U.N. Ambassador Oleg Troyanovsky cooling his heels in the lobby of the U.S. mission for 15 minutes. In another embarrassing incident, her entourage attended a North Korean diplomatic reception by mistake, thinking it was hosted by South Koreans. Morale has been so poor that two key staffers have quit in the past year, partly as a result of Kirkpatrick's lack of concern for administrative detail. That fact has not enhanced her status among foreign diplomats. Says a fellow ambassador: "She forgets that other people's time is worth as much to them as hers is to her."

Despite rumblings for her dismissal, Kirkpatrick still enjoys the full backing of President Reagan. For now, her position as the Cabinet's leading neoconservative and only woman outweighs her liabilities as a diplomat. But, as happened with Jim my Carter's first U.N. envoy, Andrew Young, she is unlikely to stay at the U.N. a great deal longer even if she continues to have the support of the President. That much was clear from her speech last week. Arguing that the U.S. should be more professional in its approach to U.N. politics, Kirkpatrick noted parenthetically: "I am not making an application for long tenure; I couldn't stand it."

-- By Russ Hoyle. Reported by Peter Staler/New York

With reporting by Peter Stoler

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